


as if you were a mythical thing

by goodboysweaterTM



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fae, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fae & Fairies, Fae Magic, Happy Ending, No Pregnancy, Passage of time, Rey is a foster kid, Reylo - Freeform, Safe to Read if You're Triggered by Pregnancy, ben is hundreds of thousands of years old, inspired by willow by taylor swift, rey is 14 at the beginning but in her early 20s at the end, willow tree!ben
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-11 08:02:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28467969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodboysweaterTM/pseuds/goodboysweaterTM
Summary: Rey stumbles across the tree when she is 14. It sits at the edge of the forest that meets the park a few blocks from the downtown bus station, a magnificent willow with a thick trunk and a canopy of billowing branches.Benjamin Organa Solo of House Naberrie doesn’t know how long he has been in this form. Hundreds of thousands of years he supposes, but he can't really be sure for he stopped counting long ago.Or, Ben is a fae in the form of a willow tree and Rey seeks him out for comfort.Inspired by Taylor Swift's willow for the #reyloevermore flash fic challenge!
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 9
Kudos: 77
Collections: Reylo Evermore Flash Fic





	as if you were a mythical thing

**Author's Note:**

> It's finally here, my contribution to the Reylo Evermore Fic Challenge! 
> 
> A big thanks to bobaheadshark for organizing.
> 
> A million heart emojis to my wonderful friend and beta katrina. 
> 
> And also a big hug to kylorithic for encouraging me along the way.
> 
> I hope you enjoy!

“Wait for the signal and I'll meet you after dark

Show me the places where the others gave you scars”

- _willow_ , Taylor Swift

  
  


Rey stumbles across the tree when she is 14. It sits at the edge of the forest that meets the park a few blocks from the downtown bus station, a magnificent willow with a thick trunk and a canopy of billowing branches. Her knees are scraped and snot is running down her face, the aftermath of another confrontation with her new foster sister. She had been running without a destination, and somehow she ended up here.

The willow’s beauty seems out of place in the shithole town that Rey calls home. Jakku is a collection of sand-caked streets and wind-whipped buildings which seem to be cast in a perpetual beige hue. This park, if it can even be called that, leaves much to the imagination too. It is more dirt and dry grass than green. And yet, here sits the most beautiful living thing she’s ever seen. Even in the darkening light of dusk, she’s sure of it. Rey approaches the trunk slowly, afraid it will vanish with only one blink. Yet the bark is rough beneath her fingertips and inexplicably warm as she leans her back against it, sinking down to tangle her scrawny legs amongst the sprawling roots.

Here, under the rustling of a thousand swaying leaves, Rey doesn’t feel so hopeless. She barely notices the tears as they dry on her cheeks or the scabbing of her shins. Just the presence of this towering tree behind her back is the most comfort she’s experienced in a long time, perhaps her whole life. There’s an energy emanating from the wood, a pleasant flow that quiets her trembling limbs. 

It seems to whisper, _You're not alone_. 

_Neither are you_ , she wants to murmur back. 

Rey isn’t sure how long she sits there, watching the street lamps flicker between the willow branches. It could be minutes or hours. She is calm and comforted when she gets up to leave, knees no longer shaking and breath steadied. She gives the willow a final glance, a soft smile, and then she is clomping back to the bus stop, worn Converse skidding on concrete. The arching branches seem to wave in farewell. 

\---

  
  


For the next couple of years, Rey all but forgets the comforting willow. She gets bounced around a few more foster homes, starts high school (the underfunded public one), and almost grows into her long legs. At least, that is until Snap Wexley walks into her life. Or, walks out of it, as Rey would later come to find out. It is a devastating first crush. Snap is a star on the soccer team, and a senior no less. And Rey, she thinks she’s in love. 

He’s older and actually wears deodorant and has all the carefree confidence of a popular student athlete with senioritis. Plus, he knows who Rey is. Snap smiles at her in the hallway and tells her how mature she is for only being a sophomore at parties. Rey eats it up, feeling for the first time in her life that she is something to be coveted. She thinks he feels the same way she does, but Snap, he just wants to get in Rey’s pants.

It’s heartbreaking, the way her rose colored glasses are so swiftly and carelessly crushed underneath his horny teenage feet. It cuts deep too. Rey feels like a fool. Worst of all, she’s angry with herself. Angry that she would let someone in like that. Angry that she would let herself get hurt. She is a swirling storm of teenage agony and age-old loneliness.

And suddenly, now 16, Rey finds herself standing in front of the willow tree once more. She throws herself against the patterned trunk and sobs big, salty tears into its bark. Her arms can’t make it all the way around the circumference, but that doesn’t stop her from holding on for dear life. Time passes, in the same illogical way, and by the time her cries subside she isn’t sure how long she has been gripping the divets of the wood. With no one else to talk to, she sinks to her knees, presses her forehead to the tree, and whispers the whole story.

There is that same energy washing against her skin where her forehead meets the trunk. It seems to change frequencies as she mumbles, almost as if reacting to her words. Rey hardly pays any attention, so ensnared in the emotions of her tale. When she finally finishes with a sigh, the tree’s sloping branches seem to fan out for a moment to match it. 

Once more, the tears have dried without her notice. She shifts off her knees, sliding her legs beside herself, and leans back on her elbows to look up at the willow’s canopy. It is vast and always in motion and _alive_. For a while, she simply watches as the pattern of green leaves, blue sky, and yellow sunshine create a million combinations. 

She finds that she is smiling and she whispers, “Thank you.”

After this, Rey doesn’t forget about the willow or the comfort she’s felt in its presence. She visits when something important has happened, something too wonderful and precious to share with anyone else. Or when things have truly taken a turn for the worst. The tree is always there to comfort her or reflect her excitement twofold. The willow is the first truly bright spot in this godforsaken place that Rey calls home.

\---

A few days after her 18th birthday, Rey gets the news. It comes in the mail, a thick, lustrous envelope that is addressed only to her. She has only just arrived home from school when she rips it open in the doorway of her latest foster home. Then she is running right back through it. 

Rey has probably never biked this fast in her life. She blows through intersections and cuts through alleys, all with the biggest grin on her face. When she makes it to the park she doesn’t even brake, just throws herself from the bike into a run towards the willow.

At its base she waves the letter in her hand, bent and wrinkled from gripping it to the handlebar. 

“I got in!” she shouts. 

Rey is going to college. The letter is from Jakku State University, only a few blocks from where she stands now but still what feels like a million miles from the many different foster homes she’s been placed in. She’s going with a scholarship no less. 

Suddenly, there are leaves falling all around her, a beautiful green downpour. Rey stares for a moment in wonder and then she is dancing and spinning and giggling amongst the shower. It’s the perfect celebration in the safest place she knows. 

\---

Only a few months later, Rey lives just a couple of blocks away from the willow. Now she visits for mundane reasons. She studies for exams with her textbooks and notes, leaned against the roots. She naps between classes with her back resting against the thick trunk. She even comes to escape when her roommate is entertaining a new suitor in their dorm room. 

Rey makes 4 more years of memories underneath the magnificent tree. There are moments of devastation and pure elation and everything in between. In the spring of her senior year, when the time comes to say goodbye, it’s even harder than she imagined. 

How do you say goodbye to the one place that’s ever felt like home? How do you let go of the only being that has ever truly been there for you? Rey asks herself a million of these questions.

But Rey also knows that she has to get out of Jakku. She knows that she doesn’t want to become a sand-caked, wind-whipped spot of perpetual beige in this hellhole. So she has to go and she has to say goodbye. She puts it off until the last possible minute, until after graduation, and after she’s packed up all of her belongings. 

Rey goes to the willow one last time on the afternoon before her train ride out of town.

\---

She arrives just in time to see the first swing of the axe as it embeds itself in the wood that she had so often rested against. 

“No!” Rey screams and then she is sprinting across the park. It feels like both a lifetime and a single millisecond.

She watches in horror as the axe is raised once more by a man in a yellow construction hat. She throws herself in between the man and the tree without a second thought and he just barely stops his swing. Her shoulders are heaving with exertion and the tree trimmers are wide-eyed with bewilderment. 

“Hey!” the man with the axe shouts. “What the fuck are you doing! I could have killed you!”

He places the axe on the ground beside him and is shaking his arms at her now. There’s another man beside him, carrying an electric chainsaw. They both stand next to a pickup truck that reads Plutt’s Tree Services on the side. Rey can still see the waving tire indentations in the grass from their drive through the park.

“You’re not cutting this tree down,” she says in between pants, inching closer and closer to the tree until she can wrap her arms around it.

“Lady you have to move,” the second man, much calmer than the first, tells her. “We have a permit.”

“I don’t care if you have permission from the bloody president! I’m not moving,” Rey shouts.

The men look at her, apprehension clouding their expressions, and then turn to each other. They’re exchanging glances for just a moment too long, probably trying to determine just how crazy she is.

The first man tries again, “Miss please, we are just trying to do our jobs.”

Of course Rey understands this, but its not enough to sway her. It figures that they’re trying to destroy the one beautiful thing in this horrible town.

“You can cut down this tree over my dead body,” she replies as calmly as she can.

The men share another look. There are just two of them, no doubt not expecting any complications, and neither of them seems particularly comfortable with moving her. The man with the chainsaw finally throws his hands up with a huff.

“We don’t have time for this!” he curses, no longer speaking to her. “We have three more jobs to hit today.”

Decision clearly made, they are both loading their tools into the truck bed only a moment later.

“We’ll have to come back tomorrow,” the first man says to the other as they climb into the cab. The engine revs and the truck begins driving away.

“I’ll still be here tomorrow!” Rey calls to the moving car as she watches it cut across the grass and then turn down the road.

Rey’s heart is finally beginning to slow as she slumps back against the trunk, arms relaxing. Then she has to ask herself if she really will be here tomorrow. She had come to say her goodbyes but now she's not sure if she can leave this defenseless, magnificent being to be chopped down. 

She turns to look at the willow and her eyes catch on the new gaping slice in the wood. Her fingers trace the gash gently and her heart squeezes in her chest.

“How could they do this to you?” Rey whispers. 

The branches billow out around her in response, almost like a shrug.

Rey sighs and sinks down to sit among the roots. All her time in this desert wasteland has made her nothing if not stubborn. She knows that her choice has already been made, for how could she leave the only being that has brought her such comfort to die without putting up a good fight.

She decides that she will wait. She will sit here until they resolve not to cut down the tree or until she has to fight tooth and nail to defend it. They can’t just cut it down if she holds herself to the trunk. Rey will stay with the willow, train be damned.

It had been dusk when Rey arrived, but now the sun has slipped under the horizon. The darkness of night creeps in from the edges of the park but she isn’t scared, just tired. Soon she is lulled to sleep by the warmth and comfort of the towering willow that surrounds her.

\---

Benjamin Organa Solo of House Naberrie doesn’t know how long he has been in this form. Hundreds of thousands of years he supposes, but he can't really be sure for he stopped counting long ago. Time has progressed differently for him, a passing of many lifetimes but only a few moments in his long existence. 

Many, many years ago Benjamin had grown tired of the toil of living amongst his fellow fae. He had been powerful with magic as a young man, with the foundation of a strong family legacy and the addition of his own natural talent, and yet no idea what to do with it. His parents were too busy with politics and smuggling to guide him in any real way. His uncle was too afraid to train him, fearful that all his power might bring darkness and destruction to their world. His mentor only wanted to use him for his family legacy in pursuit of that same darkness. 

And Ben had reached his breaking point. No one had truly cared for him or wanted him for what he was. So he disappeared to a place no one would think to look. He became a willow tree in a desert wasteland.

Part of him had hoped that someone, his parents maybe, would search for him. That they might come for him and show him that he had been wrong. However, many years had passed and no one had come.

Until there was a girl.

She was young and lost and alone, as he had been. All he wanted to do was show her the comfort that he so desperately wished for. 

To his surprise, she kept coming back to see him. As she grew older, she visited more and more frequently. Surely for her, years had passed. He could tell by the changes in her face and stories she whispered to him. For Ben though, it was mere moments. He cherished every single detail she shared and waited with bated breath until she returned. 

He was nothing but a tree and yet she sought him out for solace. She treated him as someone to confide in, a friend. He was not sure the last time he had felt such kindness and compassion.

Then the men had arrived to chop him down, as men are often ought to do. He had been contemplating whether to transform in front of their eyes and scare the everloving spirits out of them when the girl, a woman now, arrived. To his utter bewilderment, she threw herself in front of the axe. _For him._

For a moment he was angry. How could she have risked her life to defend him? In this form, no less. But then, no one had ever done anything so selfless and good for him in his entire life. 

So his choice is made. He would finally meet her.

\---

When consciousness finds her, Rey is warm. She is resting against something much softer than tree bark and it takes her a few moments too long to realize. Her eyelashes flutter open to find that there is an arm wrapped around her, a human arm. Attached to it, is a man. A very shirtless, very handsome man, but a stranger nonetheless. This realization has her scrambling backwards on her elbows.

She appraises him from a few feet away, heart beating out of her chest. Rey watches as his arms fall to rest beside him and he simply looks at her. He has the most beautiful brown eyes and _holy shit_ , he’s shirtless. The awareness has her turning beet red.

“Who are you?” she asks, more curious than afraid. There’s something familiar about him that she just can’t place.

“I am Benjamin Organa Solo of Hous--” he rushes out then seems to stop himself. “My name is Ben.”

She nods, still trying to understand what’s happening, and then replies, “I’m Rey.”

A small smile tilts his lips and under his breath he whispers, as if to test it out, “Rey.” 

Rey hardly notices as she stares in shock at the empty patch of dirt where the magnificent willow once stood. It’s almost as if it had never been there to begin with. Tears spring to her eyes and then she turns to Ben.

“There was a tree here and I…did they cut it down? How could they have cut it down while I was asleep? I--” she rambles, unsure of how to explain herself.

Ben opens his mouth and then pauses, trying to think of the best way to tell her.

“Rey, we’ve met before,” he says, slowly inching his way towards her.

“What do you mean?” she asks.

“I was in another form...” he tries, almost beside her now.

“What are you talking about?” she echoes, panic beginning to rise in her voice.

“Rey,” he pleads as he reaches her, his large hand coming up to softly grip her upper arm, “ _I_ was the willow.”

His eyes stare into hers as he says it, silently willing her to believe him. There is a warmth flowing from Ben’s fingertips, that same energy that once emanated from the tree. Suddenly, Rey is 14 again and leaning against that tree for the first time. 

_He’s telling the truth_ , she realizes.

She relaxes in his grasp, comforted once again. 

“How?” she asks in wonder.

“It’s very old fae magic,” Ben begins to explain. “It’s hard to describe but--”

Rey finds that she no longer cares as she crushes herself to his chest. She _knows_ him. He was there for her when no one else was. He held her while she slept and waited for her to wake. She has told him every dark secret about herself and he’s still here. No one has ever known her and stayed. 

His arms come up to wrap around her back and the feeling is indescribable. Rey imagines it’s like coming home. They sit there, wrapped up in each other, for a long time. The misty drudges of night turn to the warm light of dawn and the sun begins to peek over the horizon.

Rey pulls away to look at him. Her eyes are drawn to the scar that cuts across his face, the only clear remnant of his time as a willow. She softly ghosts over the length of across his cheek with her fingertips and his eyes flutter close.

“How could they do this to you?” she asks again, pain etched into her features.

“It doesn’t hurt,” Ben promises, eyes opening again to look at her. He catches her wrist in his hand and turns his head to place a kiss in her palm.

Rey blushes and then stands up beside his folded knees. He looks up to her in awe as she smiles down at him. She’s getting out of this town and she wants him to come with her. She wants to see the world with him by her side. She doesn’t want to be alone anymore. 

Ben wants that too. He wants to tell her about his past and explore this existence again with her. He wants to show her all the magic to be found in the world. He wants to spend the rest of eternity with her.

She unfurls her palm to him.

“Take my hand Ben,” she whispers.

“Always,” he says.

They walk off into the morning light, grinning like fools. Rey in yesterday’s clothes and Ben in nothing but a pair of worn, brown pants.

Later, they get on the train and watch the Jakku landscape disappear in the distance. Neither are sure what comes next, but they’re ready to face it as long as they’re together.

\---

“You know that my train could take you home

Anywhere else is hollow

I'm begging for you to take my hand

Wreck my plans

That's my man”

  
\- _willow_ , Taylor Swift

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Happy New Year!
> 
> Feel free to come say hi and get updates on [twitter](https://www.twitter.com/goodboysweatrtm) :)


End file.
